410 Mr. William Bate Hardy [April 6, 



in a borderland between what we call osmotic energy and surface 

 energy, the fraction in the one state or the other being determined 

 from moment to moment by the changing relations with the 

 enveloping matter. If the chemical structure was such as to pro 

 duce a shape other than a sphere, surface energy would tend to 

 produce chemical rearrangements, and the opposing play of these 

 forces might result in oscillations of form which would reflect the 

 irregular flux of cosmical forces just as does the particle in Brownian 

 movement. The chemical relations of such a mass would be defined 

 in the first instance by the surface layer, but any simple chemical 

 event on the surface would be likely to fire a train of events leading 

 to an eruption like a sun-spot on the sun. 



It is not, I think, difficult on these lines to conceive of a sub- 

 stance the chemical units of which could maintain themselves only 

 in virtue of a continual flux of matter and energy ^ — only, that is, as 

 an average state ; but it is certain that to develop the hypothesis wc 

 need what has not, so far as I know, yet been begun — namely, a 

 kinetic theory of those intramolecular relations of atoms which are 

 statically expressed by the geometrical methods of stereo-chemistry. 

 The living cell, like a gas engine at work, is a chemical vortex, and 

 there is no hope of analysing the motions of its parts so long as we 

 are limited to statical methods. 



In the history of the study of heredity there is a note of tragedy. 

 In the early days of last century Lamarck began the revolt against 

 the dogma of the immutability of species, which culminated in 1859 

 in the publication of The Origin of Species. Between Lamarck and 

 Darwin, however, stand a scanty band of men forgotten by all but a 

 few specialists, who strove by experiments in cross-fertilisation to 

 pierce the mystery of heredity. Amongst them, and the last of the 

 line, was a monk of the Abbey of Brunn, one Gregor Mendel, Avho in 

 1865 communicated to the Brunn Natural History Society the results 

 of eight years devoted to experiments with peas, under the modest 

 title of ExperimeaU in Plant Hybridisation. 



The fate of Darwin's work is known to everyone : how " it was 

 considered a decidedly dangerous book by old ladies of both sexes," 

 and how, "overflowing the narrow bounds of scientific circles, it 

 divided with Italy and the Volunteers the attention of general society." 

 The fate of Father Mendel's work was different. For the rest of the 

 century it lay completely forgotten and buried in the annals of the 

 little local society. But when it was rediscovered in 11)00 by Professor 

 de Vries, of Amsterdam, it was at once realised by the very few com- 

 petent to judge that the pursuit of a hobby in the abbey garden had 

 led to a theory of the nature and workings of heredity so clear and 

 complete as to leave to others only the application of principles and 

 the amplification of details. 



To find an achievement parallel to Mendel's, in the difficulty of 

 the problem attacked and the all-embracing nature of the solution 



